5 years of futility may soon end for lesbian couple / S.F. moving fast to legalize gay marriage

Rachel Gordon, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published
4:00 am PST, Thursday, February 12, 2004

Today, for the fifth time in five years, Molly McKay and her partner, Davina Kotulski, will show up at San Francisco City Hall and ask for a marriage license. And for the fifth time they will be turned down.

But if they come back in a couple of weeks, the clerk's office probably will be ready to say OK to the lesbian couple, who have been together nearly eight years and already call each other wife.

Mayor Gavin Newsom said Wednesday that he hoped to move forward quickly with his plan to buck California's law, which defines marriage as a union between a man and woman, and issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Both sides ready for fight

It is uncharted territory for a U.S. city, and Newsom said San Francisco could well land in court and ignite a constitutional battle in California. It is a battle both sides say they are ready to fight.

Newsom said the city had lined up pro bono legal help, should that be necessary, but he wasn't ready to say who was offering it. The Traditional Values Coalition, an organization opposed to gays and lesbians marrying, said it was ready to take the city to court if it tried to legalize same-sex marriages.

Newsom asked the clerk's office at City Hall to revamp marriage-license documents so they don't contain language that discriminates against gays and lesbians. Officials were working with the city attorney's office to figure out how to put the process in place.

"This is not weeks or months," the mayor said. "I hope to move quickly to afford this right to those that wish to commit in a long-term relationship. "

It won't be quickly enough for McKay and Kotulski, who will show up at City Hall today knowing they will be turned down for a marriage license.

Rally planned today

They're participating in "Freedom to Marry Week," in which same-sex couples converge on clerks' offices across the state to apply for marriage licenses. A rally is planned for noon today on the steps of San Francisco City Hall.

"As far as our friends and families and co-workers are concerned, we are a married couple in everything but the legal recognition of the same," said McKay, a litigation attorney who also serves as executive director of Marriage Equality California, a group fighting to allow same-sex marriages.

She and Kotulski had a wedding five years ago, and they have a stack of documents three inches high that enjoin them legally in many ways, such as granting each other power of attorney and property interests. But they can't file joint tax returns, and Kotulski, who works for the U.S. Justice Department, can't legally designate McKay as the beneficiary of her pension should she die.

When they went through customs at San Francisco International Airport recently, they were forbidden from filling out one form jointly as a married couple can do. "It was humiliating," McKay said. "It was awful."

Newsom's proposal is the latest foray into an issue that is being argued over in Congress, courtrooms and statehouses across the country. Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, plans to introduce a bill today that would grant gays and lesbians the right to marry.

The mayor described the conversations as good, but he declined to elaborate. The national Democratic Party and Pelosi had no comment.

Wedge issue

Bill Carrick, a veteran consultant in Democratic politics, said Republicans already were exploiting same-sex marriage as a wedge issue.

"It doesn't matter what Mayor Newsom does," Carrick said. "It's going to be up to the president to decide if he wants to use the gay marriage issue to divide people and get votes."

The Bush administration was reluctant to weigh in on Newsom's proposal.

"The president believes very strongly that marriage is a sacred institution between a man and a woman and that we should do what's needed to protect the sanctity of marriage," said White House spokesman Ken Lisaius. "Having said that, the president feels that everyone should be treated with dignity and respect, and his record reflects that."

Barbara O'Connor, director of the Institute for the Study of Politics and Media at California State University Sacramento, said Democrats nationally might distance themselves from Newsom's push for same-sex marriage to avoid alienating middle-of-the-road voters, but at the same time allow him to energize an important Democratic constituency, gays and lesbians.